Will the economic argument cure these homophobic countries?

Ridiculously, Mubarak Ibrahim was lucky that the judge had sentenced him to a fine and a public lashing (he was whipped 20 times). Described as “an unemployed artisan”, Mr Ibrahim was one of 12 men arrested by police in northern Nigeria in 2014 for being members of a gay club. The 20-year-old pleaded guilty to homosexual sodomy when in high school, arguing he had been misled into the act by the principal.

Mr Ibrahim said he had not committed this “crime” since. Judge Nuhu Mohammed believed him and decided to spare Mr Ibrahim death by stoning because the act had taken place several years earlier and he had shown “great remorse”. At the start of this year, another dozen young men, mostly teenagers, were arrested in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, because the police were convinced they were attending a gay wedding. Faruk Maiduguri, who was paraded in front of local reporters as the “groom”, said it was his birthday party. But local law enforcement boss, Aminu Daurawa, proved himself to be a modern day mix of Eliot Ness and Lieutenant Columbo in revealing the damning proof: the suspects “looked and acted feminine”. Clearly the birthday invitation that had been sent on WhatsApp was merely a cover. Moreover, if his men hadn’t stormed the event, Mr Daurawa surmised the guests would have been lynched by an angry mob.

Although rarely, if ever, enforced, people can be sentenced to death for same-sex sodomy under sharia law in 12 states in northern Nigeria; it runs parallel to state and federal law in these regions. Gay couples across the country can face up to 14 years in prison if they are proven to be in a same-sex union.

Nigeria is one of 40 out of 53 Commonwealth countries where homosexuality is illegal. The Commonwealth accounts for about a third of the world’s population, and four-fifths of this potentially powerful bloc treats people who happen to fancy people of the same sex as criminals.

It’s a stunningly awful statistic of which I wasn’t aware until I attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Malta last week. At that meeting, Baroness (Patricia) Scotland, the former Labour minister, was elected as the next secretary-general of the Commonwealth.

On the fringes of Chogm, Baroness Scotland said she would spend her first two years as the Commonwealth’s top diplomat by trying to persuade these 40 countries to decriminalise homosexuality by the time of the next Chogm in 2018.

She warned that there was no guarantee this would be on the agenda then, given that she would have to build “consensus” across the Commonwealth. This might be difficult: David Cameron raised the issue with the current secretary-general, Kamalesh Sharma, but even the British PM could not make much progress on improving human rights in other member states.

Importantly, though, Baroness Scotland added that she would explain “the economic issues in relation to human rights” in her conversations with the governments of those 40 countries.

Given that her new job comes with a salary of nearly £160,000, as well as an official residence in a four-storey Edwardian mansion in London’s Mayfair, Baroness Scotland knows that money talks.

Starting with Nigeria, she might want to tell President Muhammadu Buhari – whose media adviser this summer described sodomy as “abhorrent to our culture” – that gay rights activist and university lecturer Adebisi Alimi has estimated that homophobia is costing the country 1 per cent of GDP every year. That’s around £3.8bn, which is an economically damaging amount of money for even an oil-rich nation.

Baroness Scotland might also want to remind India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, that the World Bank estimated that homophobia might have cost the country as much as 1.7trn rupees (£17bn) in 2012 alone. This includes the impact of bullying on lost productivity, but the cost is certainly much higher now, given that gay sex was recriminalised by India’s supreme court in late 2013.

Around 3,000 people protested against India’s human rights record, notably its stance on LGBT rights, when Mr Modi visited the US earlier this autumn. Given the economic impact of homophobia, it was fitting that this protest took place in that great symbol of US entrepreneurialism, Silicon Valley.

If these countries don’t believe the economic damage that is being caused by homophobia, perhaps they could look at how gay tourism has helped Spain as it struggled to get through the financial crisis. Spain was one of the first European countries to legalise same sex marriage a decade ago, and hosts the continent’s biggest gay festival, boosting the economy by about $6.8bn (£4.5bn) a year according to specialist investment firm LGBT Capital. The same company reckons that the global spending power of the global LGBT community is $3.7trn (£2.5trn), based on a population estimate of 450 million.

Baroness Scotland faces a tough task to put an end to this problem in these 40 countries. But she is right that the best way to persuade them to improve their human rights is to prove that bigotry is hitting them in the wallet.

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